Turning the Lights Off
by clementinette
Summary: Delphine's home life in S3 after breaking up with Cosima.
1. Chapter 1

Delphine was tired. It was past nine, and she had been in meetings all day. The words on the page of the report in front of her were crawling across the screen, a mass of worms that refused to behave in accordance to the rules of language. The sun outside had long since gone down, and it was beginning to drizzle. She shut her laptop and rested her head on the warm surface that was still humming gently. With her hair spread around the desk, the lamp bathed her in a light that was more medical than angelic. Perhaps an operation could be performed. Cut open her delicate sternum and peek in. Heartache wasn't the problem though, it was in the pit of her stomach and the back of her throat and sometimes it stabbed at her from the inside, just behind her nose. _'Pense pas de bêtises'_ , she muttered, and shook the ridiculous thoughts out of her head. Before leaving the room, she reapplied her lipstick and smoothed down her coat. Delphine might be fraying at the seams, but Dr. Cormier was always perfectly composed.

Throughout the empty building and car park, the tapping of her heels resonated around her. She adjusted her breathing to match her pace in an effort to hold her body and mind together. Once in the car, she lit a cigarette - smoking in one's car, according to Cosima, was 'gross' - and so Delphine now attempted to take pleasure in filling it with smoke. She arrived at her apartment building and buzzed herself in. The lift stood opposite her, and Delphine half hoped that it would be broken, that despite her weariness, she'd have to climb the eight flights of stairs to her floor. It would be a necessary change, something new; it would shake her blood up. The doors slid silently open, however, and once she'd entered they slid silently shut, trapping her in the upright coffin of the daily home routine that she didn't want. Today, like every other day since she'd had to leave Cosima, she was coming back to a sterile apartment that could belong to any other person in any other city.

After putting both the chain and the bolt on the door, she carefully hung up her coat and bag, and placed the expensive box of sushi for one and bottle of white wine that she'd bought on her way home on the table in front of her. Nobody was there to tell her to tuck in, so she began. The same sushi that she and Cosima used to spend hours nibbling on during extended lunch breaks from the lab now felt like a punishment. Before long, she pushed the half finished box into the fridge to sit next to a woeful number of other unwanted meals. If she had a pet, her meals wouldn't go to waste. Delphine used to imagine herself with a cocker spaniel or a golden retriever puppy, but these days she would probably get a Siamese cat. Aloof, bony, appreciated for their status and breed rather than any particular personal qualities. The leading professionals of the cat world. Delphine drained her glass and poured another, still sitting alone at the dining table. She wouldn't be able to get a cat anyway because she was away too much.

Her apartment was oppressively silent. She leant over to the side shelf and picked up the remote to her stereo and pressed play. Léonard Cohen whispered how far he had come for beauty. Why had Delphine gone so far? The only beautiful thing had been the love between her and Cosima, and in order to fulfil that love with actions, she had had to leave lover Cosima behind, with only experimental subject Cosima left within her grasp. The power that Delphine now had, both over the sisters, no, the _cloning experiment_ , and within DYAD as a whole, was intoxicating, but in no way beautiful. She needed that power in order to attempt to replace the love and hurt that sometimes threatened to explode from her body. She'd come so far for love, but without her lover, it was too much and too painful.

Delphine was left alone at the table staring into an empty wine bottle after having wallowed too long in the luxury of melancholy. ' _Ça suffit_ ', she told herself, and picked up the bottle. It fell from her hand, slippery with condensation, and shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces across the kitchen floor. She didn't own a dustpan and brush, since an anonymous woman came each Tuesday and vacuumed away any trace of dust that may have found its way onto the apartment's chilly surfaces. Delphine bent down and began to pick up the pieces, but clutching the jagged neck too tight she cut her thumb. The cut gaped a little yet didn't bleed, and so she squeezed it tight but only beads of blood appeared. Frustrated with her inability to perform that very human action, bleed, she took the neck of the bottle once more and smashed it on the floor next to her. The noise that came out of her was undeniably, painfully human though - a squeak a breath a moan but now she can't breathe the air won't come into her lungs out of her lungs it hurts it hurts her mouth's wide open but nothing nothing nothing. Delphine pulled herself into a ball next to the broken bottle and wailed.

On the cold tiles, with the bright lights above her, she slowly began to feel life return to her body. The unforgiving tiles were not the pillow she deserved. After a short while she began to feel foolish for her melodrama, and pushed the shards onto a newspaper before throwing it all in the trash.

Before she turned the lights off in the kitchen for the night, she glanced around the room to check that all was in order. The single wrinkled apple in the fruit bowl, the shiny unused gadgets on the worksurface, the ashtray overflowing by the window. It was a very sad room, and she became acutely aware of that, looking at the streetlight fall on all the things that would be the same in the morning, and then the day after, and then the day after that, because she had nobody left in her life that would ever touch any of the things, or even come to her home.

In her bedroom, she peeled off her clothes and meticulously brushed and hung up her suit. Her silk nightdress felt cold against her skin. She pulled on a cardigan of Cosima's that was pushed under her pillow and wrapped it tight around her, trying to wish the world away. When she got into bed, however, she spent her last few moments before sleep reading and replying to emails. And that was how she drifted off, with only the greenish glow of her laptop for company.


	2. Chapter 2

Delphine's sleep that night was restless. She was half woken again and again by strange dreams. In and out of sleep she went, landing finally in her early childhood in Lille. She was in her bedroom in her family's townhouse, wearing soft rose print pyjamas, staring out the window while the au pair brushed her damp curls. The sun was setting, and before long, the streetlights clicked on, bathing the pair of them in gentle orange light. Her maman was still not home. The au pair kept brushing. Her maman was never home for Delphine's bedtime. The hard silver hairbrush was starting to hurt her head. It was time to stop waiting now, and she was tucked in, in her pink sleigh shaped bed with the white lacy cover, her stuffed cat in hand. The nineteenth century globe on the shelf above her, that she had never been allowed to touch, began spinning slowly. The cat in her hand began disintegrating. She wasn't sure if she'd fallen asleep again or if this was another scene from her dream, but she half woke, smelling her mother's perfume, the expensive gin and tobacco on the breath near her face. Delphine inhaled deeply, but when she rolled over, her mother's face was missing, with a black nothingness under her hair. The woman leant in to kiss her and Delphine began to scream and scream and scream, waking finally in her bed in Toronto, her laptop still glowing next to her and her mother nowhere in sight, an absence common throughout her life.

Panicked, she groped for the lamp, her eyes stinging with the brightness when it clicked on. She was sticky with sweat, and her mouth was dry and sour. The glass of water next to her bed had been there for days, but still she gulped greedily at it, trying to wash the dream away. She raked her fingers through her hair. It was tangled; no one had brushed it for her in a long time. Delphine crawled across the bed to the window sill and pushed it open. She lit a cigarette. She made rings with the smoke. She flicked the ashes in the ashtray and did it all without letting her mind's eye rest upon her mother, even for a second. A couple walked past, underneath her window. She watched them carefully. The woman was tiny, with dark hair. She was wrapped up in what appeared to be her boyfriend's coat, and leant in to him, laughing, as they passed. Delphine flicked the end of her cigarette towards them and the tall blonde man looked up. He caught her eye, and held her gaze for a few steps, before Delphine broke it off as she turned back towards her bed. She took two Valium, pulled the cover back around herself, and fell back to sleep. No dreams this time, just nothingness.


End file.
